


Champion

by shoutz



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Comedy, Laser Tag, M/M, Minor Allura/Lance (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-28 14:37:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17789246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shoutz/pseuds/shoutz
Summary: Love, lust, and laser tag. What can go wrong?Lance chooses that moment to invade Keith’s space, grinning white teeth stained blue by the UV lights. “Looks like someone’s a little smitten, huh?”Keith sighs, long-suffering, and works on fastening the vest around his torso. “Funny, coming from someone who’s gonna lose.”Lance stands up straighter, indignant. “What are you talking about? I’m the sharpshooter of the group!” He holds his blaster up seemingly to prove a point, squinting one eye down the barrel and aiming for one of the sensors on Keith’s vest.“Pow!”“What was that noise?”“Obviously the sound of my laser gun. Don’t change the subject! I’m still gonna win.”Keith grins, rolls his eyes. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”





	Champion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AlNiCa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlNiCa/gifts).



> Happy Sheithlentine's! This is my gift for the lovely [@nax_zela](http://twitter.com/Nax_zela)!! If this looks like it's heavily based on personal experience it's because it absolutely is. Hope this finds u well xoxo

_Champion._

The first word he’ll hear his soulmate speak.

Is it a question? A nickname? There’s no punctuation, no hint of context. Is his soulmate the champion? Is _Keith_ the champion? Champion of what? He certainly doesn’t feel like a champion of anything. Will he become the champion somehow? Will his soulmate?

Questions without answers run laps through his mind when he sees the word marked into the flesh of his shoulder. Water drips from the ends of his hair barely brushing the skin, cold after the warm shower still fogging up his bathroom. The droplet trails down his shoulder across the word, as if taunting him. _Champion._

Ridiculous.

“What’s ridiculous?”

Keith jumps so abruptly he knocks nearly everything on his counter onto the floor with a cacophonous series of noises that startle him a second time. He whirls around to see Pidge in the doorway to the bathroom, glasses perched on the end of her nose as she types something into her phone. She’s entirely unaffected by the noise and by his state of undress, but neither of those comes as a surprise. Keith wills his heart rate to slow before rolling his eyes and picking up his comb and tube of toothpaste from the floor.

“Ridiculous how you don’t knock. Like ever.”

“We’ve been living together for a year, if you’re not used to it by now then I don’t know what to tell you.” Keith opens his mouth to retort, but Pidge barrels forward. “Hurry up and get ready, the place is half an hour away and you _do_ need to be clothed.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he grumbles through a sigh. “I don’t even know why I’m going, it’s not like I know him.”

“Matt is my brother and as much as I love him, I’m not really good friends with his friends.” She peeks over her glasses at Keith, still standing with hands on hips and watching her. “You are my backup here. I need you.”

“And Hunk, and Lance, and you know Lance won’t go anywhere without Allura.” He hopes the sing-song lilt of his voice will get through to her, but it’s no use.

“So the two of us won’t be alone! And you know Matt’s friends already. Come on, it’ll be fun. Laser tag is great.” Pidge turns and walks away, leaving Keith just as reluctant to go as before.

“I’ve never even been to laser tag before!” he calls, but he can’t even convince himself that’s a good excuse for not going. He knows it’s better for him to get out of the house anyways, especially with midterms on the horizon. The astrophysics major keeps him mostly hunched over his notes and homework either in his room or the library, and while he does spend time with others in the latter, it’s difficult to classify hushed conversations interrupted by periodic _shh_ -ing as socializing. He should be thanking Pidge for making him do this on one of his few leisure days, despite how much he wants to sit on the couch cuddled with a big blanket and a container of leftover teriyaki chicken.

“All the more reason for you to go!” he hears. It’s enough for him to sigh and pull his shirt over his head, resigned to his fate.

It takes roughly five more minutes of fixing his hair and finding the proper jacket and boots to wear before they finally get in Pidge’s car and leave. The laser tag place is attached to an ice skating rink, and when Keith asks why that combination of places she assures him that that’s a completely normal thing. Keith doubts this heavily.

“I just don’t see why those two places would be in any way related. Are they the same business? Can people do laser tag in ice skates? Can they laser tag on the ice? It just doesn’t seem practical.”

“It’s not my place to judge the practicality of a business’s location. Either way, Matt chose the place and he says it’s good, and they have an area where we can eat afterwards, so who cares if you can also go ice skating?”

“It’s just weird!” Keith huffs and crosses his arms. “It seems weird.”

She glances over at him for a moment, one eyebrow raised. “Something seems to be bothering you.” It’s a casual enough invitation, with plenty of room to bail if Keith doesn’t want to talk about it, but it still makes the pit in his stomach churn uneasily.

Keith looks away, eyes fixed on the highway signs as they count up in increments of a tenth of a mile. With a jolt he realizes how cliche it probably looks, moping out the window to the soundtrack of some old punk band, so he tries to look somewhere else, to look less lost. He’s not sure it’s convincing enough. “I guess. I dunno.” His non-thoughts come out stunted. Pidge listens quietly, watching the road instead of Keith, and he’s grateful to not have to make eye contact. “Isn’t it weird that Matt wants to do a big group thing on Valentine’s Day?”

“That’s what you’re worried about?”

“I mean, kind of. I dunno. Lance will be there with Allura, and— Nevermind. It sounds dumb.”

“It doesn’t sound dumb, it makes sense. I don’t think it’s a date thing, though. Matt wants to make it a monthly event.” Keith hums, fiddling with a stray string on the end of his jacket sleeve. “I take it that’s not what you’re worried about?”

“Just… Soulmate stuff, I guess. I feel like I’m always on edge about it. And Valentine’s Day just makes it worse.”

Pidge shrugs, sympathetic. “I get that. Just try to relax, okay? This’ll be good to de-stress, get it off your mind. Shoot some lasers, eat some greasy food, stuff like that.” She reaches over and cranks the volume on the music currently playing from her phone’s aux cable. Their comfortable silence is blanketed in Pidge’s playlist playing bands that were popular when they were in high school together. Keith watches out the window as the sun sets through trees that rush past at seventy miles per hour, thinking of love and soulmates and the point of it all.

He desperately hopes his internal moping doesn’t show.

And if it does, he hopes it won’t last.

They pull up to the neon-lit monstrosity about six songs later. Keith has one of the songs on loop stuck in his head, and he’s nowhere near ready to interact with people, but Pidge turns off the car and heads towards the building and he can do nothing but follow.

The gaggle of vaguely familiar twenty-somethings gathered outside the front of the building all wave towards the two of them as they approach. He spots Allura’s hair from far away, a cloud of white nearly glowing with the light from the building behind her. Lance is, as usual, attached to her side, talking animatedly to a similarly excited Hunk. A few people he’s seen in various classes stand with them: Ryan, James, Ina, and Nadia. But they’re not what catches Keith’s eye.

What catches Keith’s eye is the demigod standing at least four inches above everyone else. What catches Keith’s eye is the pair of biceps crossed over a broad chest, pulling a dark henley tight over cut muscles. What catches Keith’s eye is a shock of white hair buzzed into a perfect undercut, with just enough hair flopping forward to make it stylish.

What catches Keith’s eye is the most attractive man in the history of men.

And, of course, what catches Keith’s eye makes him careless enough to trip over a curb and tumble forward, at gravity’s mercy. Or lack thereof. He realizes what’s about to happen just before it does, and the next few milliseconds spent in freefall seem to drag on forever.

The sound he makes as he connects with the pavement shouldn’t be a _smack_ but somehow it is one. Rough asphalt is abrasive against his cheek, his ear, and he’s lucky to be wearing a heavier leather jacket so the rest of him doesn’t get so tattered. His legs and torso ache with the impact of falling, and Keith hopes against hope that the sidewalk opens beneath him and swallows him whole.

A second unravels in slow parts as the pain settles into slow-forming bruises. In the next second, the laughing begins, a boisterous noise that could only be from Lance. Pidge snickers quietly next to him, and though Allura chides Lance for laughing at Keith’s pain, a grin tugs at her lips that suggests she’s barely holding it together.

The only one not laughing is the Tall Glass Of Water that caused the incident in the first place, who instead of laughing with Matt and his friends decides to stride forward and hold out his hand. Keith’s eyes catch on it, black metal glinting off the neon lights, before he looks away to hide some of his embarrassment.

In a vague attempt to retain any small amount of his dignity left, he gets up on his own, wincing at the aches littering his body. The others walk over to meet Keith and Pidge halfway, fitting their greetings between feeble attempts to hide laughter. Keith, more embarrassed than he thinks he’s ever been, doesn’t speak, instead wiping the dirt and rocks from his clothes in an attempt to avoid eye contact.

Some people holding ice skates and bags maneuver around the group as they convene. Everyone gathers together and greetings are exchanged between snickers of whose who still can’t get over Keith’s tragic fall. Keith, on the other hand, can’t remember a time where his face was this red, but he greets the others all the same. Lance and Hunk can’t stop giggling but neither can Pidge, so Keith opts to greet Matt and his friends first.

“Hey, Keith. You know James, Ryan, Ina, Nadia, right?” he asks, pointing at each in turn. Keith nods and raises a hand in greeting to the four who seem to be over his fall by now. But then Matt walks over to the Most Handsome Man Alive and elbows his side, grinning wide. “And _this_ is Shiro! He’s our laser tag champion.”

“Champion?” Shiro looks flustered, trying to shrug off the new attention. A strange warmth spreads like wildfire through Keith’s chest, and it makes its way up to join the redness already dusting his cheeks and ears. He snaps his mouth shut when he realizes it’s been hanging open as he stares, barely paying attention.

“You beat us all by at least two hundred points last time!”

Shiro waves his hand, humble. “I think the system was bugged, I missed more shots than I hit,” but the others talk over him in a cacophony of _I never even saw him_ and _I didn’t know a person could score that high._

They all head inside without much further fanfare. The place is as gaudy and neon on the inside as it was the outside. The whole place is lit by blacklights, walls painted in black and fluorescent paints that give the whole place a confusing and hard to navigate atmosphere. Keith almost would have preferred it to be pitch black, but at least the lights cover his black clothes rather well. The other half of the front is lit normally, far less gaudy than the laser tag half, and through a big set of doors he hears the crunch of metal against ice. Keith wonders absently if he could justify scooping some of the ice and using it to get rid of the blush that’s made a home on his face.

Instead, still mortified by his fall, he sticks to the back of the line as they all swarm the laser tag counter. Once the others have gotten registered, he gives his name to the chronically disinterested guy behind the counter and heads to his assigned vest and gun hanging on the back wall.

Lance chooses that moment to invade Keith’s space, grinning white teeth stained blue by the UV lights. “Looks like someone’s a little smitten, huh?”

Keith sighs, long-suffering, and works on fastening the vest around his torso. “Funny, coming from someone who’s gonna lose.”

Lance stands up straighter, indignant. “What are you talking about? I’m the sharpshooter of the group!” He holds his blaster up seemingly to prove a point, squinting one eye down the barrel and aiming for one of the sensors on Keith’s vest. _“Pow!”_

“What was that noise?”

“Obviously the sound of my laser gun. Don’t change the subject! I’m still gonna win.”

Keith grins, rolls his eyes. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“It’ll be a little hard to hide with that white shirt, Lance. You’re like a beacon in this light.”

Keith turns around to see Shiro standing behind him, arms crossed over his vest. The metal one is almost invisible in the light, and the vest barely fits over his chiseled chest. Keith has to remind himself not to drool.

“You’re one to talk with that hair!” Lance points to the white that glows a bright blue beneath the light. _Huh,_ Keith thinks, _For once, he has a point._

The grin that splits Shiro’s face is smug, lethal. Keith is sure seeing it in its full, normally-lit glory would have killed him. “Think of it as a…handicap. Makes it fair for the rest of you.”

“Oh, is that a challenge?! From the _legendary_ champion? You’re on!” Lance pokes his finger into Shiro’s chest, but he’s being loud enough that Allura has to come over and peel him away, remarking something about her hair doing the same thing.

But, it leaves Keith alone. With Shiro.

His mouth goes dry.

“I suppose that extends to you too, Keith. Unless, of course, you don’t want to…”

A grin splits Keith’s lips. He tries desperately to ignore the fire in his gut growing stronger the more he looks at Shiro.

“I’m all in.”

A soft look passes Shiro’s features for an instant, and he couldn’t look more perfect. He opens his mouth to say something, stutters for a brief moment, but before he can form his thoughts into words, Pidge approaches and tugs Keith towards the entrance of the arena alongside the others.

The arena is as poorly-lit as the entrance, perhaps even more so by design. The little light available shows a few twisting paths and barriers, boxes and random nooks and places to hide. There’s a few different areas that rise up, some that duck beneath, a seemingly endless playground bathed in UV light. Loud noises that might be music play through speakers emanating from almost everywhere, nearly drowning out Keith’s thoughts. The guy from the front desk ushers them out into the nearest open area, and the music fades as he fiddles with a microphone. He starts to bombard them with the usual rules: no sprinting, no jumping from high places or climbing over railings, if you get hurt or need help press this button, in case of emergency look for the exit signs, all the sorts of warnings a group of college kids don’t care to listen to.

From his position in the back of the group, he can’t be bothered to look like he’s paying attention, so instead Keith tries to scope out the area for potential hiding areas, escape routes, or strategic places to look for targets. In his meandering gaze, he sees Shiro reach up and put something on top of his head — a black beanie, to cover his hair. He catches Keith watching and winks.

Keith struggles through a heart palpitation.

Probably coincidental.

“The lasers and targets will activate 30 seconds after the official start! Ready?”

The bass-heavy noises intensify. A hand, abnormally cold and rigid, grabs Keith’s bicep with a firm grip, but he doesn’t have time to see who it belongs to before—

_“Go!”_

The area dims even more than before, leaving only the blacklights to guide the chaotic paths. Keith can barely see, but the one word sets him running after the hand tugging him along. The only thing grounding him through the confusion is the hand on his arm and the bit of white hair peeking out from beneath a beanie, leading him to a quieter place tucked at the intersection of a few paths on an upper level.

They crouch and the figure turns to face Keith, panting quietly as he grins.

“Hey,” Shiro says without fanfare.

“Hey?” Keith tries to be casual about it, but the syllable comes out as a question despite himself.

“Sorry, that was kind of weird, huh?” Keith gives a shrug, and Shiro presses closer, his voice dropping to an almost inaudible whisper. “This is the best hiding spot, as long as you have someone covering you.” He points down, where Keith can see Lance’s glowing shirt bobbing and weaving through some obstacles. “Great vantage point. They usually can’t tell where it’s coming from, as long as you’re quiet about it.”

The vest suddenly feels like it’s clinging tighter to Keith as he sweats. Shiro is so close it’d be nothing to close the six-inch gap between them, but before Keith can even thank him for showing him this place, a noise chimes from the guns and vests signalling the beginning of the match.

Keith looks to Shiro and feels his face heat up at the look in his eyes: impossibly soft, candy-sweet, perfect.

“Thanks, Shiro.”

His grin widens, and he opens his mouth to say something else, but loud footsteps sounding below their perch catch their attention. They both peer down to see Hunk making his way through the field, searching for targets and seemingly unaware of how much noise he’s making. Shiro lifts his hand, gestures to Keith _go ahead,_ and so he does.

A noise sounds from Hunk’s vest as Keith’s laser activates one of the sensors. He jolts and lets out a startled yell at the noise, whirling around and searching frantically for his assailant. He never thinks to look up. Instead, he runs off, murmuring something that’s barely covered by the speakers.

“See?”

Two more people pass by, James and Ryan if their silhouettes are anything to go by. Shiro and Keith raise their guns in unison and on Shiro’s whispered _one, two, three_ they both fire, setting off the two vests simultaneously. They both jolt and look around, blasters aimed ahead of them, until James spots Nadia and Ina in the distance and sets off to catch them.

Shiro chuckles from beside him, warm and impossibly soft, a noise like a blanket he wants to be wrapped in every night.

Pidge chooses that moment to slink by, careful to check around corners before proceeding forward. Shiro nudges Keith, and with a smirk that could cut glass, he says, “Watch this.”

To Keith’s surprise, he sets his gun down with a soft clatter of plastic on the metal grate beneath their feet. He almost tangles himself in the various wires attached to it, until Keith notices that one is attached to his arm, trailing up and plugged into a small panel in his elbow. He raises an eyebrow in confusion, watching Shiro as he lifts his prosthetic arm, fiddles with the end of his pointer finger. What would be the last knuckle of the digit flips up on a hinge, exposing something that glints in the low light.

With all the flair of the world’s biggest action movie fan, Shiro steadies his hand towards Pidge, fingers poised as if holding a real gun. He steadies his aim with his other hand, takes a deep breath, and utters one harrowing word.

_“Blam.”_

Pidge’s vest lights up immediately. She looks around, frantic to find her assailant, and the two of them duck in cover to avoid being seen. Keith, on the other hand, worries more about being heard than seen. He has to cover his mouth to stifle his laugh, sitting back against their cover.

“Wow. You really are the champion, huh?” He reaches out and takes the bionic hand gently, examining the laser compartment.

Shiro laughs, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. “Matt did it. The laser—”

Keith doesn’t hear the rest.

That word, though, sticks in his mind like static cling, holding onto his every electron for dear life. It echoes as if his head is a cave and the word is a gospel choir, filling the space with sound waves that bounce endlessly off each crevice.

_Champion._

A memory comes back to him, something he thought was so insignificant he barely registered it beyond his own horrified embarrassment.

 _“And_ this _is Shiro! He’s our laser tag champion, right?”_

_“Champion?”_

It all slides together in that moment, like the last row of a puzzle cube. Like a final piece to a dizzying jigsaw. Like a math problem that actually makes sense, for once.

“You’re my soulmate.”

Shiro stops talking. His eyes widen a fraction, somehow unsurprised but instead excited, like he’s been waiting for this moment all night. Keith still holds his prosthetic, a loose grip on the back of his hand. With his other hand, he reaches up and tugs the collar of his shirt and the vest aside, revealing his word.

_Champion._

Shiro smiles. The sides of his eyes crinkle, and a dimple makes its presence known on his cheek. It does Keith in.

The hand in Keith’s turns over, revealing words etched into the metal: _I’m all in._

“I had them engrave it, when I lost my arm.” Keith’s heart jumps into his throat. It’s a story for another time, but he can’t help but want to hear every last one Shiro has to tell.

“Can I kiss you?”

Leaving the question unanswered, or perhaps as an answer in itself, Keith surges forward and captures perfect lips in a kiss. They melt into each other like they were meant to be there, to share their first kiss here blanketed in ultraviolet and surrounded by neon splatter paint.

After a few moments of shared warmth, they both pull back breathless, searching for something nebulous and beautiful within the depths of each others’ eyes.

“We should get coffee sometime,” Keith says just to say something. The hesitance, the uncertainty, all disappears. As if it was never there in the first place. As if he never doubted for a second that a man like Shiro would be his soulmate: handsome, charming, playful Shiro.

Coy, devilish in his handsomeness and his mischievousness, he grins. “Winner buys.”

The next second, Keith’s jacket lights up and pings a noise at him. He looks down to find Shiro’s prosthetic finger pointed at the sensor above his heart.

“You’re on.”

Half an hour later finds them all gathered around the scoreboard outside the arena. Keith and Shiro stand side by side, hand in hand as they look up to find their names and scores. Shiro beat Keith by a paltry 6 points, but not for Keith's lack of trying. Turns out he really is just that good at laser tag.

But in the end, he concedes and lets Keith at least buy him some disgustingly fried food. They all eat as the group sits around a table and try to be casual about the freshly minted couple who can't seem to stop holding hands, or smiling at each other, or being disastrously in love.

Allura and Lance, as the only other soulmate couple in their friend group, are thrilled for the two of them. Allura begins planning their first double-date almost immediately, while Lance continues to grumble about how third place isn't that bad.

Pidge, of course, teases him endlessly, to everyone else's delight. As the self-proclaimed harbinger of embarrassment for Keith, she keeps Shiro enraptured with story after horrible story about Keith's home habits. She won't let Keith forget his car anxiety either, just an hour before he was to meet his actual soulmate, nor will she let him forget the cinematic fall he took beforehand. Straight out of a romcom.

But then, Keith looks at Shiro, at their hands where they're clasped together, and thinks it's absolutely worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> *finger guns* *ur vest lights up* *i win laser tag and buy u coffee*
> 
> come hang @ shoutzwastaken on [twitter](http://twitter.com/shoutzwastaken) or [tumblr](http://shoutzwastaken.tumblr.com)


End file.
